Foreign Policy -- Unfair but Unavoidable

From YouTube commentary "Zenga Zenga People"

"What pisses me off the most, is how western nations were shaking hands with this man a year ago; making arms deals, oil deals. Today, calling him a despot and a brutal dictator, it's like they're insulting our intelligence."

Foreign policy is not an easy game of good guys and bad guys.

Global politics becomes fraught with issues when my alliances with mutual enemies defeat their the source of their shared animosity. Right away, the latent divisions that would divide member-state rise to forefront.

During the eight year Iran-Iraq conflict, which decimated hundreds of thousands of people, the United States supported Saddam Hussein against the virulent Ayatollahs, who had expelled our diplomatic corps and held them hostage for over a year. In
1998, the United States Senate drafted a resolution to effect regime change in Iraq, which was accomplished in 2003.

Ronald Reagan assisted the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the invading Soviets. That Islamic group later fed into the Taliban and assisted Al-Qaeda.

After 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Moammar Gadhafi surrendered Libya's weapons program to avoid being targeted next by the United States. He was still a menace to his own people until his recent grisly demise.

No proverb better encapsulates the inherent complexity and conflicts of foreign policy than:

"The enemy of my enemy if my friend."